Discover how third-party reviews not only bolster your reputation but also help your off-site SEO.
We probably sound like a broken record over here, constantly preaching about how consistently collecting reviews from your customers is a good business strategy. But we promise it’s for a good reason.
It’s no secret that B2B service providers must stay on top of the latest trends to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what it takes to stay visible in the marketplace so you can continue to provide your customers with the best products and services possible.
This isn’t the first time we’ve made the case that reviews are good for SEO, and it certainly won’t be the last. Reviews are essential for building trust, transparency, and credibility with your potential audiences. But they also benefit your business by helping it become more visible in search results and feeds—especially when you’re tapping into third-party review platforms such as UpCity to expand your off-site SEO.
Get Acquainted With Off-Site SEO
Many businesses have a solid on-page SEO strategy that helps with organic search, but fewer have that same energy put into off-page SEO. Algorithms are constantly changing, but establishing (and keeping!) relevance, trust, and authority both on- and off-page are simple hacks to impact your search engine rankings for the better.
Off-site SEO relies on human behavior, according to Moz. Meaning, that people typically only reference or share content that they like.
“As such, it applies to both organic and local SEO,” the article states. “Even in a brick-and-mortar business, high-quality products get a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from current customers—the in-person equivalent of off-page SEO.”
Are you seeing how this relates to reviews now?
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So How Are These Reviews Actually Helping My SEO?
Search Engine Land states: “Google and other search engines use off-site signals to measure the relevancy, authority, and trustworthiness of your brand. Reviews are some of the most consistent channels marketers can use to improve these signals.”
A study from Moz also found that while we don’t know the full algorithm Google uses to rank sites and content, off-site SEO factors (such as reviews) are likely to carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.
Some of those reasons include:
More Keyword Opportunities
You know how you try to put yourself in the target audiences’ shoes and think: “What would this person type into a search engine if they needed my services?”
When your customers leave reviews on sites such as Google or UpCity, these are actual customers using terms they would actually type into search bars. No extra copywriting or content creation is required on your end. These customers are doing the talking for you.
And with a better understanding of what stands out and matters to these customers, you can use that knowledge to enhance your future SEO strategies.
Referral Traffic
Our biggest service to customers of UpCity is that we have strong authority and trust levels, which bolsters the rankings of reviews that mention your business. Utilizing our services and Google My Business to garner reviews will help your business streamline referral traffic.
Extra Text
At the end of the day, there’s only so much you can put on your UpCity or GMB profile. You certainly don’t want to inundate or overwhelm visitors with too much information. Reviews, however, are a great sneaky way to get more text onto your pages. Reviews are relevant text describing what your business is about, which only helps Google have more information to present your business in more searches.
Checking In On Your Review Generation Strategy
Feeling motivated to gather more reviews now? Take our short quiz for tips on how your business can get started, review our strategies to boost your online reputation and contact a reputation management provider for further assistance.